Anne Applebaum, the gifted journalist, sees Donald Trump as an untethered toddler in the driver’s seat of a car. He pushes buttons, presses pedals, yanks the gearshift. The car remains in the driveway.

That’s about where his administration is after seven months: pushing, posturing, pulling. It’s more motion than progress. It isn’t going anywhere.

But that’s on domestic policy, where a president has to work with Congress to do things. On foreign policy, a president has a free hand. Congress can implore (resolutions), deny (withhold money) and constrain (the War Powers Act), but the imperial presidency makes him emperor of the world.

So let’s imagine young Master Trump in the cockpit of a bomber, the bridge of a battleship, or, more alarmingly, the well of the Situation Room, responding to another provocation from North Korea.

Metaphorically, he has all those buttons and switches before him to launch a nuclear attack. No need to consult Congress or seek a declaration of war. That’s why temperament and experience is critical in a commander-in-chief.

Like other frustrated presidents, Trump knows his success will turn less on what he does at home than abroad. If he can bring peace to the Middle East or recast international trade agreements – both his boasts – he imagines himself as a statesman for the ages.

Or, he might decide to silence North Korea once and for all. Nuking a rogue regime would be tempting for an impetuous president who, as Hillary Clinton warned, “can be baited with a tweet.”

Trump struts like a strong man, finding his inner Mussolini. He has a thing for the military. He wanted marching soldiers and gleaming weaponry at his inauguration, but he was told that was too expensive. He often praises “my generals,” his garlanded troika of national security advisor, chief of staff and secretary of defense.

Trump’s obsession with guns is puzzling given that he was never a soldier who carried one. Although he attended New York Military Academy, he received five medical and educational deferments to avoid Vietnam.

That did not stop him from attacking the Gold Star parents of a Muslim-American soldier killed in action. Or criticizing John McCain, who was a hero in captivity. (McCain got his revenge, served cold, as the decisive vote against the repeal of Obamacare, denying Trump a signature achievement.)

Like any autocrat, Trump loves the order and discipline of the military. There is no room for critics. As the submarine captain tells his crew: “We’re here to protect democracy, not practise it!”

To Trump, the media, the courts, the states, Congress and public opinion are impediments to his agenda. No one talked back to him at the Trump Organization.

Now, challenged by that tinhorn upstart in Pyongyang, Trump swaggers like a field marshal, talking about unleashing “fire and fury” and “locked and loaded.” Having never served, having never been under fire, he has none of the skepticism that other presidents had for the military.

John F. Kennedy, a decorated naval lieutenant, distrusted “the brass hats.” In the Cuban Missile Crisis, he forbade trigger-happy commanders from firing on Soviet vessels without contacting the Pentagon. He doubted their judgment.

Dwight Eisenhower, the victor of the Second World War, famously warned of the “military-industrial complex.” Franklin Roosevelt declared: “I have seen war. I hate war.”

Trump, naïve and untutored, has not seen war. His faith in generals ignores their historic misjudgments, whether it was the jingoistic Curtis LeMay wanting to bomb Cuba or William Westmoreland hopelessly escalating Vietnam.

Now Trump can throw tridents, wag the dog and lay waste to humanity. He commands the largest military on Earth – he’s requested a spending increase (around $53 billion) almost equalling Russia’s annual military budget – for which nothing in life has prepared him. He is so reckless that two of his worried generals have reportedly agreed never to leave the country at the same time.

Trump is the kid in the car, except now he has the keys. God help us.

Andrew Cohen, a journalist and professor, is author of Two Days in June: John F. Kennedy and the 48 Hours That Made History. twitter.com/Andrew_Z_Cohen

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